Maybe a hit piece they deserved 15 fucking years ago. Both guys have been out of the asshole humor industry for fucking ever, writing Portal 2 and various other Valve media for longer than OMM was a thing. I don't fully understand the relevance of going after them now, particularly given that most of these pepe memeing shitlords are too young to know who the fuck they are.

But time's a continuum, not a series of discrete events, and the shit that's been happening over the past couple of years is just shit that's been going on for a couple of decades now hitting critical mass. It may not be the exact same motherfuckers, but it's the exact same attitude and behavior. (And some of the exact same motherfuckers.)

It's not fair to lay it all at OMM's feet, no, but OMM was one of the early, large communities of game fans who thought acting like assholes was funny, and that when people got offended it was even funnier. It's not so much a cause as a feedback loop of something that was going on in a lot of places at the same time.

(And by "a lot of places" I very much include our community in general and myself in particular. The nice thing is that those of us who've stuck around seem to have outgrown that shit -- and that hopefully includes me too.

Not that very many of us were ever anywhere near the kind of "Pepe memeing shitlords" you're talking about; I can only think of two, and they were appropriately ostracized and banned. But a lot of us were casual, low-grade jerks, and encouraged each other to be casual, low-grade jerks.)

That's why I mentioned it's a series. In a series, it's fair to have one major group be the focus of a given piece.

If the next article just talks about OMM, then sure, maybe they've just got an axe to grind. But you could certainly do an article on /vg/ or the relevant Reddit subgroups, or some proto-stage that precluded OMM, while linking these instances together as part of a broader series.

Man, I have no problem with pointing out what a shitshow that whole clique was back in the day, but I'd never point to it as the head of the human centipede of shitty fuckin ideas. It's less a centipede and more an ageless macho rat king, all bound together in a big ol knot of dicks and excrement. I'd say that there's not a lot to be gained from trying to untangle that rat junk vermicelli, but unlike most rat kings, this poor, miscreated bastard-ball is still alive. Hell, most of the rats involved in the particular knot we're talking about managed to slip free once they grew into stuff like common human fucking decency, but the shitty rat dick katamari just keeps on rolling. I think it probably started some time around the agricultural revolution. At this point I'm less interested in researching its family tree than killing the fucker with a shovel. Especially if Mr. Baby is still in it, because that guy is a cunt.

Did I get enough homophobic and/or misogynist metaphors in there? Trying to go full 90s here.